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Search by Image - a new form of search

  
  
  
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Google has introduced Search by Image, a new form of search that lets you upload an image to find similar images. For instance, you can upload vacation photos of monuments you don’t recall the names of, and images of that same monument appear in search results, along with its name.

You can search by image in three ways: drag the image into the Google images search box, upload the image, or paste a URL of the image. Search by Image browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox are also available.

Google will also begin caching web pages that it predicts users will click, saving two to five seconds in most searches.

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Source: Google

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The world's first three-dimensional plasmon rulers

  
  
  
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The 3-D plasmon ruler is constructed from five gold nanorods in which one nanorod (red) is placed perpendicular between two pairs of parallel nanorods (yellow and green).

Paul Alivisatos of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and colleagues have designed a first-of-its-kind ruler capable of measuring the configuration and movement of macromolecules, such as DNA.

The researchers constructed an “H”-shaped device out of five gold nanorods, the length and position of each of which could be controlled. They then looked for changes in spectra associated with plasmon coupling — the tendency for waves of free electrons associated with metallic nanoparticles to interact with each other.

As a molecule pushes or pulls pieces of the device, plasmons in the rods interact in distinct ways. By measuring the light scattered by the plasmon interactions, the researchers were able to deduce how the ruler, and anything attached to it, moves, in three dimensions.

The researchers say the rulers could be used to study protein folding and how DNA molecules interact with enzymes.

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Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)

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Coming to TV screens of the future: Smell-O-Vision

  
  
  
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Researchers at UC San Diego and the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) in Korea have demonstrated that it is possible to generate thousands of odors with a device small enough to fit on the back of your television.

Coming to TV screens of the future: Smell-O-Vision

This could make real “Smell-O-Vision” possible. “Smell-O-Vision” was a film technique that released smells during films, used for only one movie, The Smell of Mystery, released in 1960.

“For example, if people are eating pizza, the viewer smells pizza coming from a TV or cell phone,” said Sungho Jin, professor in the departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and NanoEngineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. “And if a beautiful lady walks by, they smell perfume. Instantaneously generated fragrances or odors would match the scene shown on a TV or cell phone.”

The researchers found that it is possible to create a compact device which heats a small metal wire to vaporize an aqueous solution, such as ammonia or rose oil, releasing smells from a small chamber. The chamber is made of a non-toxic, non-flammable silicon elastomer.

The system uses 200 controllers to selectively activate as many as 10,000 odors. That pretty much covers the number of odors humans can distinguish, the researchers said.

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Source: University of California - San Diego

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